1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a print apparatus such as copying machine or printer, a print system for managing an electronic document which is printed by the print apparatus, and so forth.
2. Background Art
In recent years, notice is taken of a technique with which a user writes a character or depicts a picture on a special sheet of paper printed with fine dots, and he/she transfers the data of, e. g., the character written on the sheet of paper, to a personal computer, a portable telephone or the like, whereby the content can be saved or transmitted by mail. With the technique, the small dots are printed on the special sheet of paper at intervals of, for example, 0.3 mm or so, and they are formed so as to depict different patterns in all individual grids of predetermined size by way of example. The address of the data of, e. g., the character written on the special sheet of paper can be specified by reading the pattern with, for example, a dedicated ball-point pen which has a built-in digital camera. Thus, the handwritten character on the sheet of paper can be utilized as electronic information.
Generally, there has been proposed, for example, a printer which outputs a position coding pattern. Here, the boundary information of that section of the whole position coding pattern which concerns an output is received from a computer which instructs the output. Besides, the position coding pattern is generated from the boundary information and is outputted. Generally, there has been proposed, for example, a system which outputs a form having a position coding pattern, to a sheet of paper. With the technique described above, the position coding pattern and the form are printed in superposition. Besides, the printed position coding pattern is optically detected so as to identify a form layout, and signals obtained therefrom are transmitted/received, whereby the intention of a user is read.
There have heretofore been techniques which endow a document with ID (identification) for identifying the document, and which include the prior-art techniques mentioned above. In general, it has been known, for example, to print a barcode on a paper document. Here, affixation methods for affixing ID information items are broadly classified as stated below.
(a) Method wherein, in creating an electronic document, an ID is affixed and is transferred to a print apparatus.
(b) Method wherein an electronic document is transferred to an ID allocation device so as to affix ID information to the electronic document, and the electronic document is transferred to a print apparatus.
(c) Method wherein an ID is allocated in a print apparatus having accepted an electronic document, and the ID is printed simultaneously with the printing of the electronic document.
However, with the technique stated above, it is a premise that the position coding pattern to be printed and a service corresponding thereto are held on a server side beforehand, and a print output is instructed under such a premise. Therefore, the range of services is very limitative, and it becomes necessary to separately build a server for management. Besides, with the technique stated above, the position coding pattern to be printed is previously determined, with the result that the special management of the position coding pattern is necessitated, so the utilization of the position coding pattern is naturally limited.
Besides, with the method (a), the information of the ID is generally large in content, so that a very long time is expended on data transmission in case of transferring data to the print apparatus. As a result, a total print time period lengthens, and a request for faster processing in recent years cannot be coped with.
Further, with the method (b), a print server needs to be separately disposed, and the configuration of a system becomes complicated.
Still further, with the method (c), even when the ID has been allocated by the print apparatus, the document to which the ID has been allocated cannot be managed. Besides, it is difficult to associate (or correlate) both a print instruction and a print result.